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- I'm a Fish!
I have a B1, when I bought it the LDS suggested buying a Z1 octo, it was an off the shelf item in yellow and saved some money. It has identical breathing characteristics.
Although I liked the look of the SS1, the problem for me seemed to be that if you donate your primary reg to an OOA buddy, you could potentially now be having to provide buoyancy control for both, I'm not sure how you'd hold it over your head to bleed air quickly since you're also breathing from it. I know most Zeagles have a pull dump on the inflator as well, but I wonder if they vent air as effectively, I've never tried it under actual conditions. In an emergency the last thing I want to have to worry about is clearing the reg each time I take it out of my mouth to vent air.
I have the ripcord on my Ranger LTD, it's never opened on it's own. I think my buddy has the velcro on his Zeagle, one dive last summer, he jumped off a dock and his weights kept going. Fortunately it was only 6' of water. But he stuffs hard weights into the pockets and doesn't have the Zeagle weight bags so that may have been part of the problem.
I actually helped a heavyset(I'm being polite here) woman back up onto the dock this summer and her standard practice seemed to be pull the ripcord so her weights dropped out prior to walking to the rinse tank. I wish she would have warned me first, she missed my foot by inches when she did it...
I bring my backup second stage under my right arm and clip it to a reg holder located on the lower d-ring of the front strap on my right side. It stays up tight, out of the way and is easily visible/accessible. My buddy actually bought a yellow hose for his backup which I like the idea of, it makes it much more visible.
Although I liked the look of the SS1, the problem for me seemed to be that if you donate your primary reg to an OOA buddy, you could potentially now be having to provide buoyancy control for both, I'm not sure how you'd hold it over your head to bleed air quickly since you're also breathing from it. I know most Zeagles have a pull dump on the inflator as well, but I wonder if they vent air as effectively, I've never tried it under actual conditions. In an emergency the last thing I want to have to worry about is clearing the reg each time I take it out of my mouth to vent air.
I have the ripcord on my Ranger LTD, it's never opened on it's own. I think my buddy has the velcro on his Zeagle, one dive last summer, he jumped off a dock and his weights kept going. Fortunately it was only 6' of water. But he stuffs hard weights into the pockets and doesn't have the Zeagle weight bags so that may have been part of the problem.
I actually helped a heavyset(I'm being polite here) woman back up onto the dock this summer and her standard practice seemed to be pull the ripcord so her weights dropped out prior to walking to the rinse tank. I wish she would have warned me first, she missed my foot by inches when she did it...
I bring my backup second stage under my right arm and clip it to a reg holder located on the lower d-ring of the front strap on my right side. It stays up tight, out of the way and is easily visible/accessible. My buddy actually bought a yellow hose for his backup which I like the idea of, it makes it much more visible.